How to tell when informal or break/fix support is holding the business back.
Recurring issues are a maintenance problem, not a bad-luck problem. When nobody owns the underlying cause, you pay for the same fix repeatedly.
If passwords, licensing, and network details live in one person's head, the business has a single point of failure that has nothing to do with technology.
No inventory of computers, no list of software licenses, no record of who has access. You cannot secure or budget for what you cannot see.
MFA is 'probably on.' Backups are 'probably running.' Assumptions are what turns a small incident into a shutdown.
Add up the hours your team loses each month waiting on technology. In most small businesses that number quietly exceeds the cost of managed support.
Reactive support means every interaction happens on your worst day. Proactive support means most of those days never happen.
New hires wait days for a working computer. New locations take weeks to set up. That friction is a sign your IT is being improvised rather than managed.